The trench coat guys are super creepy. I love how the white gloved, white megaphone po-po are wearing combat boots. Just in case the crowd turns ugly?
The crowd’s excitement on entering normally forbidden territory is contagious.
Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like baseball or most spectator sports. However, I do like good-looking athletes. I am crushing a bit on Matsui Hideki whose Yankees team just won the World Series.
Somehow I never liked Suzuki Ichiro, another famous Japanese baseball player in the US. Not because of his talents, or lack thereof. He’s just too skinny and, well, ugly looking. Yes, I am shallow.
松井様、おめでとう！Which athletes do you think are hot?!
(ps: Major yucks. I think in the background on the left is the rich dude who just bought himself a 3rd term as mayor. Stay away from the good-looking athletes, ok?).
Breaking with tradition, Hatoyama Miyuki, wife of Japan’s new PM, plans to take a visible role as Japan’s First Lady. Frankly, I had never seen a photo of Mrs Aso, Mrs Fukuda, Mrs Abe or Mrs Koizumi. So it’s revolutionary news that Japan may be on the cusp of welcoming its first First Lady.
What do we know about Miyuki-sama? She was born in China during the war, a former actress, cookbook author, television personality, and a “life composer.” She believes she shares “a sensibility” with Michelle Obama, and hopes to meet her. Mostly, she is a tireless promoter of her husband, with Wikipedia reporting that she chooses her husband’s outfits and (personally?) styles his hair.
My favorite story so far is how she explains her husband’s “alien” nickname. According to the loyal wife, he was given the name by political adversaries since he is so different from old-style politics. Unh, really?! I thought it was because he’s extraordinarily ugly, with a weird-shaped head on a smallish body. And it’s certainly better than being referred to as “the guy with the dead fish face.”
But, Miyuki-sama, please do not let me discourage your spin, conjugal devotion, or quest for the limelight. Finally, with the (first?) emergence of a First Lady of Japan, this is Japanese “change” that I fully support. Bring on the outfits, social causes, cultural activities, and style.
Update: A second Japan Times article adds even more outrageous details. Miyuki-sama is a former singer and dancer in the very popular Takarazuka Revue all-female theater troupe. And she has a spiritual side that puts Shirley MacLain to shame. She has written in a book that, while sleeping, her soul flew in a triangle shaped UFO to Venus. On a television program, she also claimed that she eats the sun, and that it gives her “enormous energy.” Even better, she added, “My husband has recently started doing that, too.” Oh, and she met Tom Cruise in a previous life, claims he was previously Japanese, and dreams of making a Hollywood movie with him.
It must be wonderful to be so fabulously wealthy, and to live in a country where such outlandish views are neither questioned nor ridiculed. Dearest husband, please make me Japan’s next First Lady!
Second Update: There’s also a New York Times article with the exact same content, plus some angry online reader replies and many replies by the reporter. Plus this amazing photo of the Hatoyamas as a young couple What happened to his looks? Can I buy her wig? And why has no one commented on this EXCITING news?!
What seems like an ancient wood residence sits incongrously on the main street of Akasaka. I visited this central Tokyo neighborhood twice recently for work. Each time I was amazed by this particular house, directly next door to an up-to-the-last-minute McDonalds, dwarfed by a few street trees, and modern high-rise towers. The owners must have turned down many offers for developing their land.
Here’s another view of this small home next to fast food modernitee.
The street contains a Metro station and a number of buildings from the 1960s to this decade. My favorite is the one in the middle of the next photo. The glass facade looks like shards jutting in and out for 15 stories.
Akasaka has a wonderful mix of the slick newest building styles, the banality that you see everywhere in Tokyo, and bits and pieces of old Tokyo charm.
My work colleagues took me into an ugly mid-rise building where there was a restaurant that looked like a throw-back to the 1960s. We sat on a tatami mat, with no floor cut-outs to make sitting easier, and the stout and friendly proprietress served up delicious bento box of sashimi and tempura for me, aji-don for my new friends. The per person cost, including service, was $11.
On a smaller side street, I saw two fancier restaurants with interesting gardens. The first is incredibly simple and mostly obscured by the wall.
The second is wonderfully fussy, including the bamboo hat that is both decorative and a means to train a pine tree.
Tokyo Moe 